[CUCBC Contacts] Cam Conservancy Fees

[Clive Rees]

Dear CUCBC Rowers,

The Cam Conservators have decided that they would 
like to raise their fees by a greedy 25% overall, 
and probably to charge a new fee of £500 per 
rowing event. This is unacceptable to all town 
club rowers, and I assume it is unacceptable to 
you. All us Cam rowers currently pay them £55 per 
eight, and also have to pay the Environment 
agency £19 in order to visit other waters for 
races.  So we are currently paying £74 whereas 
other rowers in this country pay £19.

The Conservators collect fees for rowing boats, 
canoes, punts, sailing boats, motor boats and 
anything that floats. They have decided to 
re-assess who pays how much, and have 
commissioned a survey to find out what river 
users think about one another who should pay 
what. If we do not answer this, we could find 
rowing boat fees going up potentially much more than 25%!

Please take ten minutes to answer the survey. 
There are a few very complicated questions. You 
do not need to answer them. The first simple 
section about you needs to be answered. The later 
complicated questions are rather designed to get 
the users to point at one another, and are 
probably designed to give a false statistical 
illusion that most users are in favour of fee increases.

Bear in mind that any boat or punt moored on the 
river occupies it for 168 hours a week. On 
average rowing boats are on the water maybe 2 or 3 hours a week.

Please say in the appropriate text boxes 
something like "Please control your costs, and do 
not raise fees more than inflation".

Also most importantly:
"We object to any fee on rowing events. Rowers 
have already paid fees to use the river. Events 
are run by volunteers to create some funds for 
their clubs. An event charge would wipe out the 
profit and put an end to any motivation to organise events"

Opinion is invited from all river users, just 
walking past the river counts you in the survey, 
so get your friends to take part as such. It is 
very important that every rower takes part in 
this survey, so please pass this message on to all in your boat club.

The survey is at
http://ecotec.dubinterviewer.com/scripts/dubinterviewer.dll/Frames?Quest=208&QW2512=506314&Resp=1129098809
The Cam Conservators are at
http://www.camconservators.co.uk/ which also has a link to the survey

You will see that the deadline on the form is 7 
Oct. We CRA pointed out to Ecorys that would 
effectively exclude the University, and they have 
agreed to extend the deadline to Friday 14 Oct.

Thank you for taking part,

Clive Rees M.A. Cantab, M.Sc.
Chairman Cambridgeshire Rowing Association Boathouse Management
(ex Queens' CBC, member of Crabtree BC and X-Press BC)